Tuesday, September 28, 2010

The Mission: Schwechat Oil Refinery

(Continuation of Captain Charles Estes's War Memoirs)

"So after we had lifted off we started to make a slow turnto the left and the planes behind us turned off a little quickerafter they got off of the ground, and they started their climband they fell into place in our formation, and we were on our way to Austria. I don't know the exact time of the missionthat it took, but it probably was about an eight-hour missionfrom the take-off to landing.

We crossed the Adriatic and we had the Alps in front of usand we were high enough by then that there was no dangerof the Alps being below us. We were well above 'em and wewent over 'em about 12,000 feet, and we continued to climbuntil we got to our initial point, and at that point we turnedonto the target run which would carry us over our target,and we'd hopefully drop our bombs and they would landin the right place and do the right damage.

I had been assigned a bombardier, Ernie Swanson, who camefrom another crew. He was assigned to us for this particularmission because we had no bombardier. Our flight engineer, Frank Delois, was unable to fly because of illness andSgt. Scott took his place. And we had anotherman that served on our crew, he was Jim Mulligan. He wasin the back and his job was to watch the formation and keepthem in close. And he was the only one that could speak onthe air while we were in progress. Radio silence was keptunless he saw something that needed to be attended to,and then he could come on and tell them to get in formation,or pull in closer or do something that was being done wrong.

We had another man that was assigned to us. He was a warrant officer. His name was Joe Dopkins. He was anavigator, and I think that he was assigned to us moreas maybe his first mission or to learn something aboutwhat went on on a mission so that he could be a navigator for another crew or the crew that he was on,but would have the experience of having flown a mission.Other than our regular crew, that was the only additions.

When we got to the IP we turned left and headed onto thetarget and that's when we realized that we were really goingover a hot spot because the flak was something awful;it was these black little smoke puffs coming up in front of you everywhere, and I was not on automatic pilot. The NortonBomb Site was so designed that I could put it on the automaticpilot and the bombardier was then in control of the airplane,but it was pretty rough, and I determined that it would bebetter that I fly the airplane down the bomb run, and soI did.

I had an instrument on my panel that was the PDI,Pilot's Directional Indicator. Whenever he made anadjustment on his bomb site, this instrument recordedthat change and I could make a turn to the left or theright or make a slight adjustment to the left or to theright and keep on track and on line to the target."(To be Continued.)